Panbo

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Panbo News and Reviews

Temo 450 in action (photo ©Wind4production) 10

Electrical & Engines / Green Boating

Temo, unique electric propulsion with ancient design roots

The Temo electric outboard is wildly different from any other design, but it makes sense on first sight, and more so when you dig into the details. It’s small boat propulsion in the simple format of a single sculling oar, a modern brushless electric prop drive in some ways as rudimentary as a third-world longtail. So while the boaters above are enjoying quiet and highly maneuverable thrust similar to what a Torqeedo 1003 has pleasantly provided me for years, they’ve got it in a significantly more compact and portable package…

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Wireless & Apps / Cabin & deck gear / Network & control / Electrical & Engines / The future / Monitoring & Tracking

Raymarine announces YachtSense control and switching system

Boat show season 2020 has turned into virtual event season 2020. Raymarine got in on the action with a press conference to coincide with the start of METSTrade Connect, the virtual networking event organized by METSTrade. Raymarine gave an update on DockSense, their collision avoidance system, and announced YachtSense, the product name for a new family of control and switching products.

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Editors' Blog / Sailing & Racing / Safety & SAR / The future

OSCAR: artificial intelligence at your masthead

The product name “OSCAR” is an acronym for the very valuable, though challenging, collision avoidance work attempted by the multi-camera masthead pod above, along with its processing unit and display apps. Which is Optical System Cognition And Ranging. But the developers also anticipated the usage I’ve noticed in videos showing extreme offshore racing sailors using the system: The skippers tend to call the system “Oscar” like he’s an extra crewman they’re really glad to have on board…

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Navigation / Charts

Hands-on with Raymarine’s Axiom+, improved MFDs and software

Last June Raymarine announced and I wrote about new Axiom+ multifunction displays (MFDs), plus new charts and an updated version of their LightHouse 3 MFD operating system. Each is a significant update, and so far I’ve been able to explore two out of three. What follows are my thoughts — and I must say that I’m more impressed by the upgrade than I was expecting — after testing an Axiom+ 9 and LightHouse 3.12, plus an update on the delayed charts.

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Editors' Blog / Sailing & Racing / Safety & SAR / When things go wrong...

Vendée Globe 2020, all hail Jean Le Cam!

Great to see an AIS MOB device helping with the amazing rescue of Vendée Globe solo racer Kevin Escoffier early this morning (Universal Time). At 14:00 UTC yesterday afternoon, he’d had to transition from surfing his foiling IMOCA 60 PRB at 25+ knots in 10-13 foot seas about 840 miles southwest of Cape Town — 3rd in what was then a 32-boat fleet — to grabbing a survival suit and jumping into his liferaft, all in about two minutes. Yike!…

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Navigation / Communications / AIS / NMEA 2000, 0183 & Signal K / Monitoring & Tracking

Testing Vesper Cortex M1: excellent AIS, monitoring, and much more in one box

What a box! If possible, I’d expand the headline to “excellent AIS transceiver, dual antenna splitter, high-performance GNSS, AIS display and collision avoidance, NMEA 0183 & 2000 data multiplexing, nav app WiFi support, anchor watch, and general off-boat monitoring.” And even that long list leaves out the powerful VHF radio that’s also inside the M1 hub, accessible with the innovative multifunction Cortex handsets, and understandably the most prominent feature in Vesper’s marketing. But that’s my plan for this review…